The transport of objects from one place to another has been a challenge since ancient times. Storage of multiple objects also poses challenges. In addition to specialized buildings, shelves, and cupboards for storage and bucket loaders, fork lifts, trucks, carts, planes and ships for transport, pallets have been created.
Pallets can be thought of as a form of a moveable shelf or platform. Depending on the load to be moved, the construction of a pallet is critical to durability and performance. Further, it is desirable that a pallet be constructed such that a loaded pallet may be placed directly on the load of a pallet below without damaging the lower load. Some storage systems employ open racking of pallets which systems have additional requirements so that the pallets may be used in such a system.